Month: August 2018

Rappi, the Colombian on-demand delivery startup, has brought in a new round of funding at a valuation north of $1 billion, as first reported by Axios and confirmed to TechCrunch by a source close to the company. DST Global has led the more than $200 million financing, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia—all of which

The House Energy and Commerce Committee completed its investigation of the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures program this week and requested “significant changes to the very foundation of the CVE program.” The investigation began in March of 2017 following media reports on extensive issues with the CVE tracking system, including long backlogs for assigning vulnerability scores.

Around half of those that receive and are impersonated in Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams aren’t C-level or finance/HR employees, highlighting the importance of a company-wide policy to mitigate the threat, according to new research. Security firm Barracuda Networks analyzed 3000 BEC campaigns to better understand where and how attackers are focusing their efforts. Sometimes

by Danny Bradbury US senators from both sides of the housee have announced a bill that would force the President to act against overseas hackers found targeting the US, or explain why he hadn’t. Senators Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Chris Coons (D-DE) announced the Cyber Deterrence and Response Act (S.3378) this week. The text of

For 57% of enterprise organizations in our latest survey on cloud adoption, IT infrastructure took the form of a hybrid cloud, i.e. a mix of public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and some form of private cloud data center. At McAfee, we spend a lot of time speaking about the benefits of using public cloud infrastructure providers

The move is part of a three-pronged plan that is intended to bolster user trust and safety on the photo-sharing platform Instagram has announced that its users will soon be able to secure their accounts with third-party authentication apps. Prior to the announcement of this much-anticipated change, the photo-sharing platform supported only SMS-based two-factor authentication

George Garofano (left) The fourth celebrity hacker—who was charged earlier this year with hacking into over 250 Apple iCloud accounts belonged to Jennifer Lawrence and other Hollywood celebrities—has been sentenced to eight months in prison. Earlier this year, George Garofano, 26, of North Branford, admitted to illegally obtaining credentials of his victims’ iCloud accounts using

On the heels of Google rebranding Tez to Google Pay in India, and Walmart acquiring a majority stake in e-commerce marketplace Flipkart, Amazon is also making a run in India to hone in on the country’s growing economy. According to multiple reports, Amazon has paid around $40 million to acquire Tapzo, a startup that aggregates

Mozilla today announced that its Firefox browser will soon automatically block all attempts at cross-site tracking by default. There’s three parts to this strategy. Starting with version 63, which is currently in testing in the browser’s nightly release channel, Firefox will block all slow-loading trackers (with ads being the biggest offender here). Those are trackers

Nearly all IT decision makers believe that protecting machine identities is as important or more important that human identity management, but most struggle to deliver that protection, according to a new Forrester study. The analyst firm was commissioned by Venafi to poll 350 global IT leaders about the challenges facing them from securing machine identities,

by Danny Bradbury Another mobile stalking app has been hacked, endangering both its customers and the victims that they spy on. According to Motherboard, an anonymous hacker gained access to servers at TheTruthSpy, a company that advertises software for jealous partners to track each other. TheTruthSpy sells an iOS and Android app that enables someone

For Android, malware detections were down 27% compared to the first half of 2017; for iOS, they decreased 15% compared to the same period last year Mobile security plays an increasingly important role in the protection of information assets, and this applies to both home and corporate users. So, this publication will focus on analyzing the

Air Canada has confirmed a data breach that may have affected about 20,000 customers of its 1.7 million mobile app users. The company said it had “detected unusual log-in behavior” on its mobile app between August 22 and 24, during which the personal information for some of its customers “may potentially have been improperly accessed.”

Google is pushing back against a claim by Donald Trump that the search engine stopped promoting State of the Union livestreams on its homepage after his presidency began. Trump’s claim came in the from of a tweeted video, which was still pinned to the top of his profile when this post was published at 9:30

In the past couple decades, Elon Musk’s efforts with SpaceX have partially kicked off a space race in the VC-funded rocket startup scene. At Disrupt SF 2018, we’re thrilled to host a panel of some of Silicon Valley’s top investors whose firms are eying the stars. Rob Coneybeer from Shasta Ventures, Tess Hatch from Bessemer

Half of the top one million sites in the world are now using HTTPS, in a boost for global web security, according to a leading researcher. Scott Helme revealed that growth had slowed at the start of the year, but picked up again in recent months so that 51.8% of Alexa Top 1 Million sites were

by Danny Bradbury Mobile authenticator apps are a great way to improve password security. If only they didn’t slow you down by making you type in those darn numerical codes. Surely, in 2018, there must be a better way? Two researchers at the University of Birmingham Alabama think they may have an answer, but it needs

“GDPR is coming, GDPR is coming!” For months this was all we heard – everyone was discussing GDPR’s impending arrival on May 25th, 2018, and what they needed to do to prepare for the new privacy regulation. GDPR – the General Data Protection Regulation – first came to fruition on April 14th, 2016, as a

The discovery was made barely two days after the release of a patch that fixes the critical flaw in the web application framework Researchers have discovered freely available proof-of-concept (PoC) code that can be used to exploit a critical security hole in the Apache Struts 2 web application framework shortly after the vulnerability was disclosed

Instagram is growing quickly—and with the second most popular social media network in the world (behind just Facebook), the photo-sharing network absolutely dominates when it comes to user interactions. And with great success comes great responsibility—responsibility to keep users’ accounts safe, responsibility to fight fake accounts and news, and responsibility of being transparent. You might

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is seeking additional information about the working conditions in Amazon warehouses in advance of legislation he’s preparing to introduce on September 5. Income inequality was, after all, the centerpiece of Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. It was a populist message that resonated strongly with voters, giving the dark horse candidate a boost

The number of complaints filed with the UK data protection watchdog has more than doubled since the introduction of new European regulations. There were 6,281 complaints filed with the Information Commissioner’s Office between May 25 when the new GDPR rules went into effect and July 3, a rise of more than double from the 2,417

That’s when self-driving vehicle technology startup Aurora will take over. Kirsten Korosec 8 hours Byton, the new China-based automaker founded by former BMW and Infiniti executives, has produced the first 10 prototypes of its tech-centric all-electric SUV and some of them will be in the U.S. before the end of the year, company president and co-founder

If IT professionals can master enterprise patch management — a vital cog in any security strategy — they can address many of their security challenges. Enterprise patch management is certainly nothing new, and almost every business struggles with it in some way. Just look at any of the annual security surveys — patching, or lack

Every Startup Battlefield is an absolute thrill ride, but we get even more charged up when it all goes down in a region where the tech startup ecosystem is taking rapid shape. TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA 2018 — our first pitch competition in this region — is the perfect example. It’s time to shine the spotlight

Election security has again been called into question after millions of Texas voter records were left exposed. A file discovered by Flash Gordon, a New Zealand-based data breach hunter, was left on an unsecured server without a password, according to TechCrunch. Of the 15.2 million total registered Texas voters, an astounding 14.8 million records were left

by Lisa Vaas Apple last week suggested that Facebook remove its Onavo security app from the App Store due to privacy rule violations. On Wednesday, Facebook complied. Onavo, an Israel-based company that Facebook acquired in 2013, has been raising eyebrows for months. Facebook had been pushing people to download the virtual private network (VPN) app

How To Safely Post Images Of Your Kids Online I’m not a big sharer online but I do love popping up a few pics of an important family milestone on Facebook. Whether it’s a child starting a new school, an amazing family holiday or a hilarious birthday pic, sharing family snaps online is a great

Security researchers from Google have publicly disclosed an extremely serious security flaw in the first Fortnite installer for Android that could allow other apps installed on the targeted devices to manipulate installation process and load malware, instead of the Fortnite APK. Earlier this month, Epic Games announced not to make its insanely popular game ‘Fortnite